


Turn of the Century

by lost_spook



Category: Fall of Eagles (TV), Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-08 04:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Russia 1905: Things must remain as they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn of the Century

**Author's Note:**

> Written from a prompt from JJPOR over on LJ, the idea being some kind of S&S fic that played with late 19th C/early 20th C Russia, possibly using the fact that David Collings played both Silver and Milyukov in the BBC's 1974 epic _Fall of Eagles_ , set in that period. What I came up with was to use Michael Bryant's potrayal of Ratchkovsky (how it's spelled in the serial).
> 
> However, to all intents and purposes, it should read as an historical, rather than a crossover. With the usual apologies for any inaccuracies. 
> 
> Warnings for mentions of some of the rl events in 20th C Russia.

Silver slid into the narrow gap between the tall clock and the shelves full of files, and was finally about to correct the technical error, when an unwanted human strode across from the other side of the room, navigating the desk with the practised ease that suggested that this was his office.

“You. What are you doing here?”

Silver turned his head and gave his most inoffensive smile. “Fixing your clock.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the clock,” said the man, after eyeing its dial briefly. Then he glanced back at the papers on his desk, and the piles of files and photographs. There were more pinned to the wall. Some of them had red crosses marked on them. Silver had a feeling that didn’t mean anything good. The man frowned at him, then, puzzled. “Do I know you?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so.”

“I suggest you explain what you’re doing in here, or –” He shrugged, and flickered a glance at him. There was an unusual precision to his movements, for a human. “You’ll be questioned, and shot. Or merely shot, and we’ll ask the questions of your friends. It is often simpler that way.”

Silver sighed, and moved back out into the room. “No.”

“No?”

Silver put his hands behind his back, and leant against the shelves. “It’s complicated, but no one’s going to hear you. Nobody of any use to you, anyway.”

“What?”

“Your clock needs mending. It’s losing time – rather literally. Three times today, you’ve had fifteen minutes repeat itself.”

“Telling me fairy tales is not going to help, I assure you.”

“I’m not. Your day has been forty-five minutes longer than anyone else’s,” said Silver, impatiently. “At least, it has if you were in here when it happened.” He faced him across the desk. “So it’s vital that I repair it. I’m sure you see that.” He waited for the human to look away in confusion, but the man shook his head. He didn’t understand the attempt to influence him, but he rejected it and reacted against it with more instinct than anything else, striking out at Silver, who dodged, sliding by him against the shelves, but in doing so, found himself at an awkward distance from the clock.

Silver scowled. It wasn’t as if he were really in any danger from him, even here, but it was a terrible nuisance. The man – Ratchkovsky – had a mind that was hard, cold and focused, and that was a problem. 

*

Sapphire and Steel were outside in the corridor, facing an apparition that was human-shaped, but wavering and white.

_It’s from the future, Steel. Fifty years into the future._

Steel stepped forward. “What do you want? You don’t belong here.”

“Only to stop him,” the ghostly shape said. “What he did. What I’ve seen.”

“You don’t get to change the past. I don’t care if the rest of your life disappointed you. You don’t.”

“Not for me, but for Russia! To stop what he did now, before –”

_Sapphire?_

She stretched out a hand towards the insubstantial figure. _Investigations. Assassinations. Deaths. Hundreds, thousands, dead. And on, and on. Other times, and other people. Millions, Steel, millions. The future for this place._ She drew back. “Steel –”

“It doesn’t alter anything,” he said, and grabbed at the figure, pinning him, or it, against the wall. He addressed it now: “Do you think he’s the only one? Take him away and there won’t be someone else? There will. There always is. And that’s only if you succeed, which you won’t. Time is using you. It doesn’t care about you, or the future or the past. It only wants to escape, and then it will destroy even more lives than you can possibly imagine.”

Steel kept his grip on the ‘ghost’ as he spoke, until it screamed out, and finally vanished. He glanced at Sapphire.

_Yes_ , she said. _It’s gone. But there is still the device_ –

*

“Haven’t you finished yet?”

“Steel,” said Silver, as he looked around at them both. “I would have, but Mr Ratchkovsky here wasn’t very helpful.”

Steel merely glared at him, and strode past. He caught Ratchkovsky by the wrist, causing the human to gasp and pale. “Get on with it.”

_I could –_

Silver put a hand to Sapphire’s arm, interrupting her. “Steel has him.”

She turned, giving a slight raise of an eyebrow.

Silver laughed as he moved away from her. “Oh, no. I don’t doubt your abilities, Sapphire, but – you don’t want to touch _his_ mind unless you must.”

_He’s a killer?_

_Yes. Oh, he doesn’t do it himself. He uses other people, and his weapons are paper and ink, but, yes. He is._ Not _a very nice person_. His distaste was clear in his thoughts, but he shrugged it away.

_Yes. You may be right_. She stayed in the centre of the room, hugging her arms against herself. She was wearing a long, pale blue dress of the sort that was in fashion here – narrow-waisted, high, lacy collar and puffed sleeves. He approved. This dull office had probably never had such an exotic visitor.

_But, of course._ Silver moved over to the clock, and wedged himself back into the small space between it and the bookcase. He examined it, and then ran his hand down the side, before moving it with an effort to open up the back. “Aha. Now we have you.” Then he leapt back into the room, lightly, and surveyed the clock-face. He tapped it first, and then moved the hands back twenty minutes. “There!”

“That was it?”

Silver looked put out at Steel’s lack of appreciation. “Yes. The device itself wasn’t really the problem –” He stopped, watching as time moved backwards around them, the unwanted extra fifteen minutes being removed from the world. Once that had been done, there were only the three of them left in the office.

_Now?_ Steel directed the question at Sapphire.

She nodded. “It’s finished.”

“Finally,” said Steel, sourly, and disappeared out of the office door.

Silver raised an eyebrow.

“He hasn’t forgotten last time,” said Sapphire, watching him.

_That’s a very nice dress, Sapphire._

_Silver –_

Silver brushed his jacket down, and gave her a rueful look. “Yes, so I’d gathered. How long do you think it will take? A century or so?”

“At least.” Sapphire smiled, and leant forward, kissing his forehead lightly, and then drew away. _I think it may be a while_. With which, she left without a backward glance.

And it wasn’t, thought Silver, as he packed up his tools carefully, as if it had even been _his_ fault – or at least, certainly he hadn’t intended – Then he shrugged, cutting himself short, and brightened at a new thought. It might be a while, true, but he _would_ be needed again; that was inevitable. And next time, whenever next time came, he would change matters. He smiled, and straightened himself, pocketing the case of tools inside his jacket.

He paused, on the verge of leaving, and gave the board full of photographs one last look. Of course, it would be dangerous to do anything that might give Time a way in, but there surely wasn’t any harm in causing a very minor irritation to a thoroughly unpleasant individual, not to mention the rest of these secret policemen, or whatever it was they were.

He smiled to himself, and then stole all the unused drawing pins from the desk before he faded away.


End file.
